orvette Racing finally got its home win. Antonio Garcia and Alexander Sims put the No. 3 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R on top of the GTD PRO class Saturday in the Chevrolet Detroit Sports Car Classic, the program’s first points-paying victory in the Motor City since 2007. Winning it on General Motors’ doorstep made it sweeter.
It should have been simple. Sims and Garcia started from pole and led 75 of the 79 laps around the nine-turn, 1.645-mile street course. It wasn’t simple at all. The 100-minute race got messy late and stayed up for grabs until almost the end. Either way it was a big day for GM, which also took the overall win with the No. 31 Cadillac V-Series.R.
Sims handled the opening stint without much drama. Good launch, a gap of about three seconds, out front the whole 31 minutes before the stop. “My race was super-easy, to be honest,” he said, even though he’d been on edge beforehand. This is not a circuit where you relax.
Garcia drew the hard part. Traffic piled up right after the driver change and the five-second lead he’d inherited shrank to almost nothing. He spent something like 15 minutes stuck behind the No. 77 Porsche, the last car running on the lead lap, before he could shake free.
Then came the restart that decided it. Jack Hawksworth threw the No. 14 Lexus down the inside into Turn 1 just as the caution came back out, and the two cars hit hard. Race Control ruled the pass came after the yellow, told them to swap back so Garcia had the lead again and gave Hawksworth a drive-through for the contact.
Garcia did the rest, bringing it across the line 1.935 seconds clear of Andrea Caldarelli’s No. 9 Pfaff Motorsports Lamborghini Temerario GT3. Win number 32 in IMSA for the Spaniard. Sims is up to 16.
It wasn’t all clean in the Corvette camp. The No. 4 of Tommy Milner and Nicky Catsburg came home seventh after a late penalty, though the pair kept the GTD PRO Drivers and Teams points lead. Chevrolet stretched its Manufacturers margin past 100. Next up is the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen on June 28.
